Mexicans head to polls Sunday as country's troubling issues head in unknown direction

Sunday

Jul 1, 2012 at 7:28 AMJul 1, 2012 at 7:34 AM

MEXICO CITY — Mexicans head to the polls Sunday beset by troubling issues — raging drug violence, social inequality and congressional gridlock — and with little confidence, analysts say, that whoever wins the presidency will be able to turn things around.

Alfredo Corchado

MEXICO CITY — Mexicans head to the polls Sunday beset by troubling issues — raging drug violence, social inequality and congressional gridlock — and with little confidence, analysts say, that whoever wins the presidency will be able to turn things around.

At the heart of Sunday's election are questions that many voters are wrestling with: Has the former ruling party, which governed Mexico with a sometimes iron fist for seven decades and is now heavily favored to return to power, changed along with the country to become more democratic and more accountable? Has Mexican society, which fully embraced democracy 12 years ago by handing power to the political opposition, seen too much of its blood spilled to continue with the democratic experiment?

Voters from Dallas, traveling this weekend to cast their votes, are among those trying to answer those questions.

"This is the most humbled and dignified way I know to pay my rent, as a way of putting it, to a country I once lived in and still see as my homeland," said Mario Ramirez, a Dallas restaurant owner who will vote Sunday and serve as an electoral watchdog in his native Mexico City. "Mexico beckons us at a critical time. The outcome is just as critical for both countries."

As the country bleeds, and the economy booms, all indications are that Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will beat out challengers Josefina Vazquez Mota of President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, and Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. The PRI is also expected to win the 128-seat Senate, possibly a majority in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies, and at least two of the five governorships up for grabs (it already controls 20 of 31 governorships).

As the decision nears, voters don't appear as hopeful as they did in 2000, when they ushered an opposition party into power for the first time, or as fearful as in 2006, when the left-leaning candidate was favored to win but ended up losing a close race. Instead, a mood of pragmatism appears to prevail in this country of 112 million people, particularly in cities hard hit by violence such as Ciudad Juarez.

"This is no longer about hope or fear," said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, director of international relations at the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology in Mexico City and a former foreign policy adviser to Calderon. "What Mexicans want is that whoever wins, may he or she do so with a clear majority. The next six years will be fundamental for Mexicans not to give up, not to lose hope or their will, because the last 12 years have been about experimenting, and the experiment hasn't gone as planned."

For some analysts, the worst-case scenario is a close outcome, which could sink the country, already reeling from chaotic violence resulting from the U.S.-backed drug war, into deeper uncertainty. Although polls show Pena Nieto with a double-digit lead, few experts believe the final result will reflect a margin so wide.

"Our choices aren't very appealing; no one even talks about solutions," said J. Arturo Yanez, an investigator and expert on security and the judicial penal code. "This race is more about nostalgia than about finding answers. We're about to set back our clocks 82 years."

Alejandra Rodriguez, 33, a waitress at Cafe Tacuba, summed up the mood: "The three candidates make me want to cry. I dread having to decide whom to vote for because no one really inspires me."

The presidential candidates recently signed a pact vowing to respect the electoral results, although echoes of the past haunt both Mexicans and Americans. Six years ago, Lopez Obrador barely lost the election and threw a tantrum, mocking the country's institutions — "To hell with them," he yelled — and called for protests that for weeks shut down the capital city's main thoroughfare, Reforma Avenue.

More recently, gun-toting traffickers, all too often in cahoots with government authorities, have exposed the frailty of judicial institutions long cobbled together not by rule of law but by the sheer will of powerful men — known as caudillos under the PRI — who relied on corruption and collusion to get things done. In the six-year drug war launched by Calderon, more than 55,000 people have been killed, the worst killing surge since the 1910 Mexican Revolution and 1926-1929 Christian uprising. Today, finding a solution to the violence is the unmistakable priority in the minds of voters, polls show.

"We want peace," said Wendy Pacheco Valenzuela, a 19-year-old student from Ciudad Juarez who traveled to attend a Pena Nieto rally in Mexico City. "We want a Mexico that's secure, and offers us a future with job opportunities, choices."

Already, instability in Syria, Greece and elsewhere is affecting markets in the United States. Uncertainty in Mexico, with its 2,000-mile U.S. border and $500 billion in annual U.S.-Mexico trade would "have enormous impact on the U.S. economy," said Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress from El Paso.

"Mexico is Texas' biggest trading partner," O'Rourke said. "In El Paso alone, more than 50,000 jobs depend on the commerce and retail shoppers from Mexico who cross our international bridges. Strengthening the relationship between our two countries is vital to our economies and our shared future."

Despite the insecurity Mexico has vaulted from the world's 20th-ranked economy in 1996 to the 12th biggest, more than doubling in size, and in the next 10 years is expected to become one of the top five economies in the world. In the first quarter of this year, Mexico's economy grew at a 4.6 percent rate, and the country had just 5 percent unemployment in April.

But good news is often overshadowed by the ongoing bloodshed.

Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, is slowly emerging from years of violence between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels as they fought for control over distribution routes into the United States and for the local drug market. The violence has left more than 10,000 people dead since 2008, so many that cemeteries were running out of space.

In the mayoral election two years ago, voters turned to the PRI candidate, Hector "Teto" Murguia Lardizaba, in hopes of restoring stability to the city. Today, positive signs abound: Nightclub life is returning. Manufacturing on the border is booming. Employment is up, gaining 15,000 jobs in the first five months of the year. Killings have dropped to about three a day from more than 12 amid speculation and reports that the Sinaloa cartel has won its battle with the Juarez cartel. In short, the city is back.

Asked what advice he would have for Pena Nieto should he win Sunday, Mayor Murguia said the key to the turnaround was increased and unfettered cooperation among the branches of government – local, state and federal — and support from the U.S. government.

"The challenge isn't creating rule of law, but creating jobs, jobs, jobs," he said. "That's how you resolve the security issue in Mexico. That's the lesson for Mexico."

Others aren't so sure.

"Everyone talks about the return of Juarez," said Sandra Rodriguez, a reporter and author of the book Factory of Crime, which examines the rate of impunity in Mexico, where more than 95 percent of crimes go unpunished. "But what about the 10,000 people who died? Where's the justice for them? How do you talk about victory without justice? How can you move forward?"

Rodriguez questions whether an agreement between the government and the cartels may have led to the decline in violence.

Murguia denied that.

"I can assure you we did not signed a peace pact with the cartels," Murguia said in an interview following a Pena Nieto rally. "Cooperation made the difference."

Juarez is learning to hold those in power accountable, albeit with serious limitations, said economist and social activist Lucinda Vargas. Similarly, if the PRI returns to the presidency, it will be up to civic activists in Ciudad Juarez and across Mexico to keep the party accountable and to continue strengthening the rule of law.

"That itself is the challenge in a country that is still going through the growing pains of establishing a more solid and real democracy," she said. "It is happening, and Juarez is a model of this, but it is still in its incipient stages."

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